With major bushfires burning around the country – Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria especially – conditions are expected to worsen before they get better. Australia is in the grip of a major heatwave with temperatures well into the forties and approaching the fifty degrees celsius mark in many areas. It has been this way for weeks in Outback Australia and is expected to continue for some time.

South-Eastern Australia is in the grip of a heatwave with temperatures threatening the record books. Temperatures across the country are reaching between 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), with the hottest recorded temperatures in many centres threatened, as well as the highest temperature every recorded in Australia.

A reasonably strong earthquake (5.6) has just struck South Australia’s outback – basically in the desert. From what I understand there is a small town located 10 minutes from the suspected epicentre of the earthquake. There is potential for significant damage within that sort of radius of the earthquake, but thankfully it has struck a fairly remote region. It is of a similar magnitude to the earthquake that struck Newcastle in 1989.